More than fifteen years passed without incident in Percy's—Ignatius's—home. He was Ignatius now, Ignatius Prewett, just a muggle accountant with a weird, old-fashioned name. He'd even learned to think of himself as Ignatius now, given he'd been calling himself that for so long. At night his old self—Percy—came to him in his dreams, but it was a figure Ignatius barely recognized. He would wake up and wonder where he would be in life were he still Percy. Probably working in a ministry job, perhaps dating some girl he used to know at Hogwarts, and certainly still being the family scapegoat. He decided he liked what Ignatius had better.

One thing Ignatius had was Audrey. That first date had turned into a second, then a third, then a fourth, then too many to count. He'd bared his secrets to her and she had accepted him anyway, understood why he was the way he was. Someone like that was someone he wanted to keep in his life. Still, there were a few things he'd never told her. He never told her that he'd once gone by a different name, and he never told her about Bill, Charlie, Ron, or Ginny. The way he saw it, they simply weren't relevant and it would be a waste of breath trying to explain them all. As for the name, that was a part of him he'd left behind a long time ago. Audrey would never know him by that name, so what was the point in telling her? It would be like bringing his old identity out of a dark closet, making a great show of this dead being he'd once been shackled to. She didn't need to know that ugly part of his past, didn't need to know about the notorious name of Weasley. Once again, you never knew which muggles had friends or relatives who attended Hogwarts and who might know the name Weasley. The Weasleys had too much notoriety for comfort.

He was honest with her about the magic. About a year into their relationship he took out the wand in his closet and told her an abridged version of the story, about the war and how deeply the wizarding world had hurt him. She was skeptical at first, but after he conjured butterflies that flew around the room she started believing him. After many questions, she smiled and helped him put the wand away again.

They were married in 2001, in a small ceremony. Martin Smith was his best man, and Jane Smith was Audrey's maid of honor. He found he didn't miss his family's company. He didn't have a great history with family weddings considering he'd skipped out on Bill and Fleur's. He felt a little bit sad about not having Oliver Wood there, though. He'd hemmed and hawed about whether or not he should rekindle contact with Oliver, but ultimately decided against it. He was fairly sure Oliver was still close with George because of quidditch, which meant any contact with Oliver could morph into his whole family banging down his door and demanding he come back.

The children came along a few years later. Lucy Hope Prewett came first, on a cold spring morning in 2003. Ignatius chose the name Lucy because it meant light, and Audrey agreed because it was the name of her favorite character from the Chronicles of Narnia. He awaited her birth with excitement and terror. Audrey's parents knew his history with his family and had told him that having a child of his own might give him empathy for his parents. The thought of having empathy for a parent who wished he was dead terrified him, and he clung all the more fiercely to his resentment as Audrey's pregnancy progressed. But quite the opposite happened. When the nurse passed Lucy to Igantius and he looked down into her brown eyes, he felt a sense of protectiveness. He could never, ever tell his daughter that he wished she was dead, and so his hatred of his father only solidified.

Molly Anne Prewett came along three years later. Her name had been a last-minute choice, and in fact her parents had walked into the maternity ward fully prepared to name her Sophie. But the best-laid plans often go astray. Little Molly came out with blue eyes and a face blue to match due to the umbilical cord around her neck. As Ignatius watched from the shadows while the doctors resuscitated her, he thought of his mother and the pain she must have felt at losing a child. He thought of her alone in the Burrow, clutching the vial of potion he'd given her without anything else to remember him by. For the first time in nearly a decade he felt a shred of empathy for her, and with a change of heart talked to Audrey about names. He didn't hate his mother like he hated his father. Molly Prewett was a highly suspicious name, one that stuck out like a sore thumb, but Ignatius didn't intend for her to ever be in contact with anyone who knew the original Molly Prewett.

After the girls were born they moved away from the city center, to Surrey. They weren't too far from a place on Privet Drive, maybe fifteen minutes by car, but they didn't know that. The girls enrolled in the local primary school and Audrey found a job there as a teacher.

Both girls were witches. From about the time they could walk, they were each showing signs of accidental magic. A great question mark hung over their futures, for

Ignatius had trepidations about sending them to Hogwarts, trepidations he could not share fully with Audrey. If his siblings bred at the same rate his parents did, that school would likely be crawling with Weasley cousins. It would be only too easy for his daughters to bump into first their cousins, then their aunts and uncles, then maybe even their grandparents, which Ignatius could not allow to happen. The last name Prewett gave them a layer of protection, but only a thin one—anyone who knew that Molly Weasley's maiden name was Prewett might start doing some digging when presented with a red-haired Prewett child. Ignatius often cursed himself for picking an old family name instead of choosing a random name out of a phone book. He cursed himself for a lot of things, but that one in particular was going to be a problem. But then, he hadn't been thinking clearly the night he made that decision. He had repented in leisure for the alcohol in the form of a hangover, and would repent even longer for the decisions he'd made.

At times he debated with himself the merits of homeschooling the girls, at other times he wondered about sending them away internationally, and at others he wondered what would happen if he simply kept sending them to their muggle school. Most of the time, though, he mentally kicked that can down the road and lived in denial that the girls were growing up and a decision would have to be made. Even as Lucy's birthdays ticked by—nine, ten, eleven—and as her dolls and crayons were slowly replaced by books and hair styling tools, he pushed that thought out of his mind. Which was why the letter caught him by surprise when it showed up at their house one summer morning in 2014, cloaked in thick parchment laced with green ink.